


The Time That Is Given To You

by captainoflifeandlemons



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Death Chair™, Gen, I don't even know man I do not even know, Monologue, The Empty Man, as an alternative to screaming into the void, which would be my Hera fics, whispering from the void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8371783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainoflifeandlemons/pseuds/captainoflifeandlemons
Summary: The Empty Man once went by the name of Victoire Fourier. Now she has no name, no tangible form, and no sympathy for the man whose actions led her here.(The plot is a little hard to grasp as it's presented here; see the end notes for a summary of what actually happened here.)





	

**The golden rose is ready for melting. Proceed with designation Alpha. Beware. Five. The Empty Man has awoken.**

 

There is a room on a space station orbiting a star. It has always been there. The star has not—the station has not—but for as long as these two have existed, the room has as well. 

It isn't where it used to be, of course. When the station was built, there was no door in engineering. Things move as time passes. Walls are put up and torn down. A room once reached through the storage bay can now only be entered from the level below. But the room itself was there before. You were there before, in the room. I was there, and then I was nowhere. Now I am everywhere.

If you could hear these words, they would mean nothing. You have been to the room many times. You have never been to the room. From where I'm watching, you were in the room, you will be in the room, you stand in the room now—but you remember none of it, and so to your mind, you have never been there. 

This is a lie. Much of what you know is a lie. If you could hear these words...but you can't. I whisper, whisper, whisper, but all you feel is a cold unease pooling in your throat. All you see are the eyes of the dead that haunt you and the living that haunt me.

 

**The Andromedas are broken. The northern light should be reversed. Alert. Four. The Empty Man approaches.**

 

The captain says (said? will say?) I went missing. She's wrong, just as she so often fears she will be. It's not me that went missing; it's something else. A barrier that once stood between my consciousness and the universe. The bindings of spacetime. 

You are a clever man, Dmitri Volodin, and the woman who built the chair in the room is cleverer by far. But neither of you foresaw what happened to me. Neither of you foresaw what I would become. 

They foresaw what you might become, though. How many times have you been to space? How many years have you drifted on this raft? The answer is not what you think. Most missions, nothing goes wrong. Most missions they let you keep your mind. But there have been times, puppet, when your strings have been cut. I have watched you kill. I have watched you refuse to kill, and they have all died regardless. I have watched you rage against the dying of the light and I have watched you blow out the candle in the wind and there have been times when I could not tell the difference. After these missions, after the others are gone, you always end up in the room. Sometimes you go there willingly. Sometimes—and these are the times when the torn fragments of your strings, netted behind you, drag at the bodies in your wake—you do not. But eventually, you are always there. You are always here, and then gone.

You will wake up on Earth in a new body. The memory of the room and the chair will be gone. Sometimes more than that is missing. Sometimes years have been replaced. 

 

**The frozen pages are blank. Decide what to do with the time that is given to you. Emergency. Three. The Empty Man hungers.**

 

You killed them. I do not need to see it now—although I am always seeing it—in order to know this. Even back then I knew. I knew with you, and I suspected with the others. I suspected everyone after Hui's death. And so with nobody to turn to I confronted you, my friend and colleague, for the murders of my friends and colleagues.

We do not get to choose who we fight with. We do not get to choose who we fight against.

There was a moment when I would have killed you. But you did not want to kill me. You did not want to kill my mind, not after Hui's had been lost to the stars, whispering farther into the universe than even Goddard has gone. This time was one of the few when you knew about the chair, and once I was unconscious it was to the chair that you dragged me. You sent my mind spiraling into an abyss. I was not the only thing spiralling. 

I am watching it now, the collision, the crossing of signals. My human soul and an alien song, merging, transforming, becoming this. Becoming me. A trick of timing, impossible, unthinkable. I am unthinkable, therefore I am.

 

**The broken flower is in the vase. Don't listen to your eyes. Danger. Two. The Empty Man sees you.**

 

It was disorienting. It is disorienting. I am still awakening now, still living through those first beats of incorporeal awareness. I am still discovering my own omniscience. I am still finding the Hephaestus,  watching myself step on board, watching as they remove the chair and the room and what you did to me from your memory. (You do not deserve this. You do not deserve to forget, not when I never will.)

Through other eyes, from other facets of my existence, I watch the captain. They are watching her as well. She lives behind glass, but to her it's a mirror. We see in. She does not see out. She does not see the way out. And she does not see me. Only one person ever does; she carries the secret of my presence just as she carries the lies of yours. I did not know Hera before, but I know her now. She carries many things.

It is disorienting. It will be disorienting. But I can barely remember life before this. For all time, it seems, I have lived this way. For all time and no time. I am still awakening now, but I am also on Earth. A shadow, a ghost, a memory of Victoire Fourier, I sit in the ear of a Goddard employee and I whisper. He sends you my words in a daze. When I leave, he will shake his head, twice, and stare uncertainly down at the screen. He will tell you this was a test.

For once, you will be hearing the truth. This was a test—is a test—will be a test, of my making. You will not know what it means when it reaches you. You will know one day.

 

**There's no way out. There's no way out. But there is a way in. Danger. One. The empty man shall knock.**

 

I have seen all of this before. I will see all of this again. I am seeing all of this now. 

Once, I was a scientist. Out of respect to who I was, I have formed the following hypothesis: you are guilty, Dmitri Volodin. I have waited. I have watched. I have gathered empirical evidence. And my hypothesis has been supported.

Once, I was a scientist. Now I am a judge, and your life was your trial. But you need not fear that I have come to deliver your sentence.

Time is taking—will take—has taken care of that. Time is taking—will take—has taken care of you.

 

**Zero. The empty man is with you. Extreme danger. Zero. The empty man is with you. Extreme danger.**

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to say that I have a good explanation for this, but I really, really don't. I just...want Victoire Fourier to be the Empty Man. Just 'cause.
> 
> This fic operates off of the idea that Hilbert has used the chair episode 38 before. With every mission he's been a part of (and here, I'm assuming that number to be at least a handful), his mind has been sent back to Goddard and uploaded into a new organic body (a clonem I'm envisioning, of the original Hilbert). In the process, his memories of the room and the chair are erased. On some occasions, when he's sided with his crew against Goddard for one reason or another, even more memories have been removed. 
> 
> When Fourier discovered that Hilbert was killing of her crew mates, she confronted him (uncertain if she could trust Lovelace or Rhea). Hilbert knocked her out and stuck her in the Death Chair™ so that her knowledge wouldn't be lost. Somehow, her signal crossed with some alien plot device being broadcasted across space. Instead of being transferred to Earth, her consciousness is now drifting across space and time. Only Hera can sense her presence (as we all know, there's something else on the Hephaestus—why shouldn't it be Fourier?). 
> 
> Do I actually think any of this is what happened? No. Was it wildly fun to write? You bet.
> 
> (A final note: the real mystery of Wolf 359 is why Fourier speaks without conjunctions. I just can't, er, cannot say.)


End file.
